9 replies to this topic

[Ken Simpson]

Hi,
I was looking for some Greek words with elision marks.

Some common ones are αλλ' or επ' or απ'.

To search for these particular forms you would search for "επ.'" or "αλλ.'" or "απ.'" (using the period to specify a trailing elision mark).

So I thought, let's look for all the elided forms in the NT, so initially I thought, let's just look for the 3 letter elisions. So I tried "??.'"

The results surprised me, I got ἄν, ἄν_2, ἀπό, γέ, γῆ, δέ, δή, διά, δίδωμι, ἔα, ἐγώ, εἰ, εἰμί, εἷς, ἐκ, ἐν, ἕξ, ἐπί, εὖ, ζάω, Ἤρ, θά, Κῶς, μή, νή, ὁ, ὅς, οὐ, οὗ, σός, σύ, τέ, τίθημι, τις, τίς, ὑπό, ὗς, ὡς.

Now some of them are fine, but most of them do not have an elision mark at all.

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I don't get why I am getting ἐκ and δέ at all.

What's the story?

So then I thought, I wonder what the elided form of ζάω so I put in the search bar "??.'"@ζάω, but Accordance gave the word selection box.

I don't get why it didn't find the form, since it seems like it's just a filtering of the original search results.

Any ideas?

[Ken Simpson]

Hi all,
any ideas on this?

[J. T.]

I'm not entirely clear on why Accordance is returning the list you provided, Ken. I get the same results with the search syntax you provided.

I can, however, tell you how to get the results you desire.

I used this: "=*?.∆"

Explanation:

• "..." Tells Accordance to consider the inflected form
• = Tells Accordance to consider diacriticals (exact form)
• * Tells Accordance to Search for a group of characters with n amount of characters
• ? Tells Accordance that the last character can be any character [A-z] within the Helena font
• . Tells Accordance to treat the next item as a character [EDIT: This step isn't required to get valid results]
• ∆ Is the actual character used for elision, not the English "'"

Does that help?

Edited by James Tucker, 19 October 2012 - 06:28 AM.

[J. T.]

How did I know to use ∆ for the elision marker?

1. It actually is a result of my extensive work as a Scribe. Having keyed in numerous texts, I knew that ∆ is the elision character, not '.

2. OK. So how could you know if you haven't done Scribal work? It's easy actually. If you open the characters popover (which needs to have the option to open to a floating palette), you can see that '" both are invalid characters. Thus, one cannot pass these through to Accordance as a character and get valid results.

Edited by James Tucker, 19 October 2012 - 05:40 AM.

[Ken Simpson]

Hi James thanks for looking at it.

I can't get it to work. I can't see why an uppercase delta would be an elision mark and I had already searched the character palette for the elision mark and was unsuccessful.

When I copy and past what is above I get "the selected word cannot be found in the GNT-T text"

So I tried typing it in.

"=*?.(shift-d)" and I get...(drum roll) "the selected word cannot be found in the GNT-T text"

here's what I see in the character palette...

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and I can't see an elision in there...

thoughts?

(on another issue, I still find it hard to keep in my head when to use the =, and how it's different from the " ")

[J. T.]

Ah, yes. The appearance is actually not a delta in the sense of Greek language, but a delta in since of Scientific notation (= change). So, it's option-j. Give that a whirl and see if it doesn't work.

[Ken Simpson]

Sadly Accordance still says it can't find any such word....

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Edited by Ken Simpson, 19 October 2012 - 06:20 AM.

[Ken Simpson]

Thanks James for solving this one for me.

the syntax for this search is

"=*?∆" where ∆ is not UC delta but OPTION-J (which maps to the elision mark)

I really don't get why the period messed up the search though.

Edited by Ken Simpson, 19 October 2012 - 06:38 AM.

[Ken Simpson]

Interestingly, this search returns οὐ (which I guess is a sort of elision) but has a smooth breathing rather than an elision mark. So it's an incorrect result (though sort of understandable).

And it returns εἰ which is definitely not elided in any sense. So a wrong hit. I guess the smooth breathing mark is exactly the same as the elision mark.

Edited by Ken Simpson, 19 October 2012 - 07:21 AM.

[Ken Simpson]

Hi,
for those interested....the OPT-J character is also the character used for breathings (as well as elision). The period ignores the fact that the elision does not use overstrike so that various forms of the breathing marks can be found (ie compounded with an accent).

The help file says....

In both Greek and Hebrew the search ignores differences in the amount of overstrike, and combination with other diacriticals. Therefore similar diacritical marks are found in one search. For example a search for an acute accent will not only find all the different overstrike acute accents, but also all combinations of a breathing mark with an acute accent

So, that's why it's finding both breathings and the elision mark. I guess the two won't often be a problem in a search, so it may not be worth the changes needed to fix it.

Edited by Ken Simpson, 19 October 2012 - 09:11 PM.